AT&T reduces price of iPhone 3GS to just $9, what are the implications?

By Tyler Lee – 07/20/2011 03:31 PDT

Have you been meaning to get your hands on the iPhone but due to its price you decided against it? Well earlier this year, for those who remember, AT&T dropped the price of the iPhone 3GS to $49 for a 2-year contract, and if you thought that paying $49 for a one and a half year old device was just ridiculous, perhaps their latest price drop to just $9 for a 2-year contract might change your mind.

Unfortunately for you, the $9 offering will be a refurbished device, which means it is a device that has been used within the 30 day trial period and returned, where it is then given a factory reset and goes through testing before being sold. So if owning a somewhat used iPhone 3GS does not bother you, then perhaps you might like to consider taking AT&T up on their offer.

For those wondering what this further reduction in price could imply, it seems that during Apple’s quarterly conference call, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer mentioned something about a “future product transition that we will not talk about today”. This was in response to why Apple was projecting $25 billion in revenue in Q3 which was a 12% drop from their reported $28.57 billion in revenue during Q2. Some are speculating that this is because the next-generation iPhone is due to make an appearance sometime during then, and because of that, sales of the iPhone 4 are expected to start slowing down.

Perhaps those rumors of a September launch of the next-generation iPhone may not be so far fetched after all.

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